campaigning

The Tory short campaign has exposed how Labour can beat them with a better long campaign, writes Progress deputy editor Conor Pope Can you change tack in the middle of a campaign? The Tories’ are still suffering from a terrible period in the polls that has left them hovering dangerously close to the 40 per …

Peter Mandelson and Spencer Livermore exchange reflections on 20 years of running Labour’s election campaigns Dear Spencer, The Labour party still (just about) retains a lot of institutional memory about how we have fought elections since 1997. We had a good run until 2010 and it is worth recalling why this was so. 1997 was …

Originally published in 2012, this updated book promises to ‘reveal the insider secrets and skills you need to make sure you’re a winner on Election Day’. It might seem a little ironic that the authors are Liberal Democrat campaigners, given the party’s disastrous performance since 2012. But both Mark Pack and Edward Maxfield have experiences …

It is fair to say I have not been flavour of the month with many Labour members since criticising Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership a few weeks back. A handful of local Labour members, or at least someone claiming to be, have even set up an anonymous Twitter and Facebook account campaigning for my deselection. Some of …

Doorstep campaigning is the backbone of any Labour victory. But unfortunately the importance of knocking on doors is not acknowledged by vast swathes of our new membership. An article was published in LabourUncut last week that warned of the ‘cult of the Labour doorstep’ which the author claimed did us more harm than good. This …

Since September we have undergone a change in the Labour party that has not been seen since 1997. We have had a huge spike in membership, with both returning and new members, inspired by the leadership election and the debate that has gone on from it. But the Honeymoon cannot, and will not, last five …

What is the single most important thing that any Labour activist can be doing at this moment? Campaigning for a Labour win and a Labour mayor in Tower Hamlets – a Labour gain and the start of the Labour fightback for 2020. Everything else, really, can wait. We have three days to ensure that the …

In the run-up to the general election we knocked on the doors of millions of voters – but were we kidding ourselves to think we were having ‘conversations’ rather than just canvassing? ‘Four million conversations’ was the boast made by Ed Miliband in Manchester a week before polling day. And, of course, that was a …

In a series of thoughtful analyses, defeated Labour candidates Nick Bent, Mari Williams and Lucy Rigby all argue that the one aspect of Labour’s campaign that went right was the ground campaign in target seats. I am afraid I disagree. As Luke Akehurst’s analysis makes clear, we did worse in key seats than in the rest of the …